


Unfinished Tales of the Multiverse

by gakorogirl



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7035616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gakorogirl/pseuds/gakorogirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flash-related oneshots for writing challenges, tumblr posts, and late-night discussions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jesse Quick

"Um- hey, dad? Could you come in here for like, just a second?” There’s a very slight tremor in her voice, and Harry’s heart stops for a minute.

 _Oh god._ A list of about _all_ the things that could possibly have gone wrong starts racing through Harry’s head as he ran into the lab (has the breach started up? has she stabbed herself with something? true, the last time that happened was when she was four, but Harry has _never_ forgiven himself for that- _has Zoom come back?)_

And so of course, he’s more than a little relieved to find her standing, unhurt, in front of the currently empty prototype breach generator. A brief glance around shows nothing out of place- Jay Garrick (Harry almost thinks of him as _Henry Allen,_ but catches himself before the end of the thought) is still sitting in a chair with frequency detectors around him to measure his earth-3 vibrations, the computers are all humming softly, but nothing seems wrong there, either.

But then Harry sees Jesse’s face, and she’s staring at her hands with wide, blank eyes. “Jesse? What’s wrong?”

“Did...” Jay starts, when Jesse makes no reply. “Was Jesse by any chance exposed to any strange chemicals within the past few months? Dark energy?”

_Oh no. Oh no. Shit. Shit. Shit._

Harry takes a deep breath and points at Jay. “What happened?” he asks. Jesse stirs slightly, and looks up from her hands. 

In a single swift motion, Jay throws the cup of coffee hanging loosely from one hand. And coffee flies out in a smooth arc, spraying across the room (”Hey,” Harry starts, because there will be _hell to pay_ if that stuff gets on anything in here) and in a flash of bronze lightning his arm is jerked up from his side, and when the lightning clears the full cup is in his hand.

“Oh _no,”_ says Harry. Jesse shrugs, seemingly overcoming her shock.

“Dad, we both knew-”

“You didn’t _show_ any abilities before now,” snaps Harry, and immediately winces slightly, regretting his tone.

“Maybe they just didn’t kick in,” says Jesse. “Barry’s records show that his didn’t manifest until hours after he came out of his coma,”

“Oh, _hours?_ And that’s no different from _weeks,_ I suppose?”

“Look, I _have_ powers, there’s nothing we can do about that. And I was, well, thinking,” says Jesse, more quietly. She doesn’t make eye contact, and Harry’s back to _oh no no no._  “Barry says the speed force is a sentient being, that it told him it chose him to give him his powers. Maybe since our Earth doesn’t have a Flash any more, I’m supposed to be it?”

 _No no no,_ thinks Harry, but when he opens his mouth he can’t think of anything to say. “It’s too dangerous,” he manages finally. “And you don’t know how to use these powers.”

Jay presses his lips together and shifts awkwardly. “Dr. Wells,” he says, “I _am_ a speedster, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be going anywhere too soon. Helping your daughter with her abilities would give me something to keep busy while you work on the breach.”

“Looks like you’re outnumbered,” says Jesse with a tiny smile. “And since Zoom’s not around any more, there’s nothing in this city that can lay a hand on a speedster like me.”

 Harry sighs, running a hand down his face.

“Don’t do anything _stupid,”_ he says warningly. “The particle accelerator should be a safe enough place for you to figure out your powers. _Don’t leave S.T.A.R. Labs,_ do you hear me? Jay, you can go ahead and unhook from the frequency sensors, I have all the data I need.”

“Love you, Dad,” says Jesse, and there’s twin flashes of bronze and white lightning as both speedsters whisk out of the room. Harry sighs. _This was a mistake._


	2. Hartley Rathaway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second entry for the Harrison Wells appreciation fic-a-thon, I felt like writing a little bit of post-Flash Back-timeline stuff and I remembered that I hadn't finished this challenge yet! Not set in the Earth-2niverse (but expect more on that later this month!)
> 
> Tried writing Hartley a little differently from usual this time, but I think it worked!

"Meet Dr. Harrison Wells," says Barry, and Hartley freezes, his heart skipping a beat- of course it doesn't really, but it feels as if it did, and he barely listens as Barry continues to speak. "From Earth-2."

There's a long, charged silence, as they stare at the man with the face that Eobard Thawne stole (so, Hartley's logical brain realizes, barely anything to do with Thawne at all- too bad his instincts keep telling him  _danger._ )

"Hi," says Cisco, breaking the silence. Hartley wonders if he should wave, or something. Waving is too awkward. He settles for a quick, tense nod. Caitlin and Cisco puzzle out, piece by piece, the same realization Hartley came to seconds ago, and as they think out loud he tries to convince himself that everything will be all right. Not the man who ignored him, who  _purposefully_ killed hundreds if not thousands in the explosion that Hartley should have could have didn't stop, not the man who locked him in a glass box for _months_ before Cisco finally started letting him out to help with metahuman crises. A different man.

With the same face.

"How do we know he's not evil like the other guy?" asks Cisco, and Hartley nods slowly, thoughtfully. Thawne was a different man, so there is no "evil like the other guy," but they still don't have proof of this Harrison Wells' good intentions. As this Harrison Wells speaks, Hartley watches him ever so carefully, looking for anything but sincerity in his demeanor. He sees nothing except the truth, or whatever this man believes the truth to be (but then again, he didn't realize that Thawne was an impostor, that Thawne was a _murderer)_

"Well, we're batting a thousand against these breachers."

" _You're_ batting a thousand, Crisco? What's your sample size, ten?"

Hartley almost laughs. Maybe this Wells is different from the old one, sharp and shrewd and with tired lines around his eyes, so different from silver-lying Thawne and his reasoning voice, his snake-hypnotic eyes.

And when Joe West walks into the Cortex and pulls out his gun in one swift movement, Hartley is faster, (without real metahuman powers you don't survive on your own in Central City's underground, unless you can be faster than the other guy) and he sends a single nonlethal pulse across the room. Joe fires one bullet before being knocked off his feet, and Barry plucks it from the air easy as blinking.

Hartley looks over his shoulder at the new Wells. His hands are raised, but he barely blinks as Barry drops the bullet to the ground. Hartley is worried for a minute (maybe he _is_ Thawne, maybe he-) but then he notices the tightness in Wells' face, the hidden tension, and while that  _is_ the face of a man who's been shot at before, it's not the face of a man who could dodge bullets if he really wanted to.

Hartley still doesn't trust this new Wells, not completely- but it's a start. (And there are very few people that Hartley Rathaway trusts, anyway.)


	3. Cisco Ramon

The space between dimensions is blue, blue as Cisco's goggles, blue as the sky and burning selenium. Cisco's fingers twitch and a portal coalesces around him, and he steps out into the brightly-lit corridors of STAR Labs, Earth-2 edition.

"Record time," he says, checking his watch. He grins, a hint of mischief in his eyes, and as one of the many employees of the lab (but  _god,_ it's weird to see STAR up and running, the way it was when he first started work, and not empty) walks past, Cisco darts back into the space between worlds. He miscalculated a little, ended up in a hallway instead of in Harry's office.

Time to cause a little bit of trouble.

* * *

 

Harry really doesn't have time for any bit of trouble today. The alarm system he set up to ensure that Jesse didn't run off has been going off nearly every day, but she always seems to make it back before he has time to check the security feed. Today, he's going to  _watch_ the feed the  _whole day_ to catch her at it, because if anything were to happen to her-

The screens flicker with static for a minute, and Harry frowns. "Ramon, is that you?"

"You caught me," says a familiar voice from behind him, and Harry turns to see Cisco floating in midair and folding one of his letters into a paper airplane. "I saw this cool video tutorial on how to fold these so they-"

"Ramon. Jesse is-"

"A speedster?"

Cisco's face spreads into a wide grin at Harry's look of surprise, and he taps the goggles strapped to his head. They glow faintly. "I vibed her yesterday, looks like she's doing an awesome job keeping the city safe. Not as awesome as we do on our Earth, but-"

Frowning, Harry says, "Well, that's just it. She's not supposed to be leaving STAR Labs, I thought Jay would keep her out of trouble but-"

Dropping out of the air and landing awkwardly on his feet, Cisco knocks over the rest of Harry's stack of papers and pulls off his goggles, folding them and tucking them into his pocket. His eyes are more serious than usual, no trace of laughter. "See, Harry, Jay's the Flash too. His whole  _thing_ is saving people, just like Barry's is. He won't let Jesse get hurt, but can you  _imagine,_ say, trying to stop  _Barry_ from protecting the city?"

Cisco frowns, wondering if he's made his thoughts clear. Honestly, Jesse isn't someone he would peg for the hero type, always acting smarter than everyone else (she is, of course, but she's got so much of her dad's personality)... but she's got a good heart. He adds,

"Wally picked up superpowers too. I'm working on designing him a costume now, he wanted to go with yellow and red but Barry freaked out and punched him the first time Wally popped up unannounced. The color scheme looked too much like Thawne's. So we kept the red highlights and changed the base color to silver, it's super cool- and I put in an emergency feature that I'm honestly _pretty_ proud of, if he looses his speed or gets hurt and someone tries to grab him he just activates the circuit and  _wham,_ fries them out of their shoes."

"Wally too," mutters Harry, thoughtful. 

"Hey, what's Jesse been wearing? Does she need help designing a suit?"

And just then, Harry's phone rings. "It's... Jesse," he says, puzzled. "But she should still be in the old particle accelerator-"

"Obviously, she shut off the alarms. Answer it, she might be in trouble!" Agitated, Cisco's outline begins to glow blue and he hovers off the ground, looking over Harry's shoulder.

"Ramon. Stop that."

" _Answer it!"_

Harry answers the phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First part of a storyline that will extend for several chapters~ hope you guys enjoyed!


	4. Axel Walker

_So all hail the pioneers, rebels and mutineers-_

"Walker?"

Axel straightened up, lifting one side of his headphones. "What's up, bossman?"

"Don't call me that, Walker. You need to bring these to the Cortex, Wells said he needed them done by noon." A stack of papers plunked onto Axel's desk and he took a quick glance at the top of the stack- data sets, looked like they were from the bio department. Axel himself worked in chemistry, mostly just fetching and carrying so far.

One day, though, he was going to have a  _real_ job here. He'd started working here after he'd gotten a letter, telling him that his grades were exemplary and if he could just get the rest of his act together he might have a chance at STAR. He'd figured he should take the offer- there wasn't much of a life in crime, anyway. It had gotten his dad a few bullets through the chest, and if he could do something better with his life he was sure as hell grabbing the opportunity with both hands... But he'd be damned if this job wasn't boring as _anything_ most days.)

A glance at the clock told him he had five minutes, and he scooped up the papers and set off at a jog, awkwardly readjusting his headphones with one shoulder.

* * *

 

"Jesse, where  _are you?"_ Harry growled, pacing through the Cortex. Cisco tapped into security feeds around the city on a computer that felt almost familiar, looking for any sign of the speedsters.

" _Um, I'm at the corner of Ribbon and Old Main,"_ answered Jesse. There was a loud crash, and Harry jumped. 

"Jesse? Jesse, are you all right?"

"Found them!" Cisco announced. "Traffic cam footage, looks like they're fighting a meta." He squinted at the screen, trying to make out which of the two speedsters was which. It looked like Jay needed to stop every few minutes to rest- his connection to the Speed Force must still have been recovering- but Jesse could move  _fast._ Maybe not fast enough, though...

The metahuman was  _surfing the air,_ balanced on a floating golden ring, and a short cape flared out behind him, swirling in the air currents. "What the  _hell?"_ Cisco whispered, trying to improve the quality of the camera. "Harry! Who _is_ that?"

"I don't know," Harry said tensely. "That... disk is fast, though. Jesse!"

_"Yeah?"_

"Can you grab his cape?"

_"Tried that. He threw a ring at me, it hit Jay. I think his leg is broken."_

"A ring?"

 _"Like the one he's standing on. It looked like it came out of nowhere."_ The metahuman leapt into the air, and the ring he had been standing on shot through the air in a boomerang arc. It hit Jesse in the side, sending her sprawling across the cement. 

Harry lunged towards the computer screen, shoving Cisco out of the way. "Jesse? Jesse, are you all right?"

"Looks like she dropped her phone," said Cisco over his shoulder. "She doesn't look too hurt, though," he added as Jesse staggered back to her feet, zipping out of the way of another attack. The metahuman looked over his shoulder and materialized another golden ring around his feet, lifting into the air and whisking away as the CCPD arrived in a blaze of flashing lights.

"Um, hello?" said a voice from the entryway to the Cortex, and Harry and Cisco turned to see a dark-haired young man standing with a pile of papers in his arms. "Dr. Wells. I've got reports from the biology labs here, they-"

Harry hissed angrily between his teeth and waved a hand at the young man (who Cisco found vaguely familiar... something about his voice?)

"Walker, just put them somewhere and get out!"

 _Axel Walker,_ thought Cisco suddenly, and looking at him brought on a vision of explosions and high-pitched laughter and eerie carnival music,  _Trickster Number Two._ Cisco blinked, and realized that he was sensing Earth-1 Axel. This version of Axel pressed his lips together and dropped the papers in front of a computer, then pointed at Cisco as he backed out.  _I like your shirt,_ he mouthed.

Axel was about to walk out of the Cortex- Wells was always rude, he was used to it by now- when something shot past him in a ball of coppery lightning and he staggered, tasting static electricity. "What the-"

"Oh  _shit,"_ said a girl's voice, and Axel blinked, confused, at... Wells' daughter, supporting the old dude he'd seen around STAR Labs over the past few days. "I didn't realize there would be anyone else in the Cortex."

"What just happened?" Axel asked, and three pairs of eyes and one pair of striped blue goggles turned to him.  _Now_ this _is exciting._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there's the next little snippet, just something I typed up in about 10 minutes between classes. Axel, aka "Jester," is going to be a permanent fixture in the Earth-2niverse and part of Jesse's Team Flash!
> 
> Also, a reminder that I won't be writing a full fic for this AU, just quick oneshots whenever I feel inspired to do so. Jesse is going to get a Flash costume at some point, though, and I do want to write that scene. Also, I'm going to do something with Earth-2 Len and Lisa at some point.


	5. Hal Jordan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking another quick break from Earth-2niverse to do some Flashpoint fic loosely based on an idea I talked about with Tmae! Like most of my stuff, this isn't supposed to be shippy but it might be if you, like, squint. Also, dear god this was an adventure to write, but it was fun. 
> 
> Quick overview of characters:   
> Robert Queen as Grey Arrow (why is there a color change? idk)  
> Hartley Rathaway as Pied Piper (wears hearing aids, is still healing from having his vocal cords ripped out)  
> Sara Lance as White Canary  
> Earth-1 Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan

“We’ve heard reports of a superweapon, in government hands.” says Ol- Robert, _Robert,_ Barry reminds himself forcefully as he keeps listening. “The U.S. government says they’re going to do whatever it takes to end the war and destroy the Atlanteans’ weapon, along with the meta powering it.”

Barry looks down at his feet, trying to think of anything _but_ Ronnie and Dr. Stein, trapped underwater, in the dark, forced to be the core of the weapon that would destroy the world. He remembers how scared and angry Ronnie was, how cautious Dr. Stein was to hide nearly a year before Hartley helped them find F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. _They must be terrified,_ thinks Barry. And now they’re going to die to save the rest of the world.

“How do they even have the coordinates for the weapon?”  
“Reverb and Cobalt managed to send back a good estimation of the location of the weapon before their ship was destroyed,” says Sara. “They didn’t survive the attack.”

“Seems to me,” says Tess thoughtfully, “That if they’re going to make an attempt to stop the Atlanteans, we should let them.”

Robert scoffs, leaning back against the couch as he twirls an arrow between his fingers. “Whatever pilot they’ve got, he won’t make it anywhere near the Atlantean base. Face it, we might as well give up now.”

Frowning, Barry says, “We’re alive, O- Ro- _Arrow._ And as long as we’re alive, there’s still hope.” He’s met with a row of weary, desperate faces, and he sighs. The Pied Piper’s hands dance (Barry still cringes every time he sees the bloody bandages around Hartley’s neck, it was _his fault_ for trusting Len, thinking he would be the same man-) and Harrison translates.

“Piper says that our job isn’t to stop them. Our job is to make sure they succeed.” He turns to Hartley, watching the thin man’s hands fluttering for several more seconds. “Piper, are you suggesting _Hal Jordan?”_

“The rogue fighter pilot?” asks Tess.

“The same,” Harrison confirms. “If anyone can fly this mission, it’s Jordan, but he’s too much of a wild card for the government to let him anywhere near a bomb.” He frowns. “Who’ve they got flying the mission?”

Hartley shrugs and takes the laptop from Sara, tapping a few keys. After a tense moment of silence, he looks up and signs something.

“He won’t do at all,” says Tess.

“So that’s it, then,” Harrison says. “We need to take every precaution to make this mission a success. With the Supergirl out of the picture, _this_ is our last, best hope.”

“Our last, best hope is taking out this Reverse Flash,” argues Robert. “If Barry can fully reset the timeline, none of this will matter. And for him to _do that,_ he needs to be able to travel without the Reverse intercepting him.”

“For now, we don’t know where Thawne is,” Barry says heavily. “Harrison, where is this Hal Jordan?”

* * *

 

“You need me. To fly. To fly a _jet with a mysterious government superweapon into the middle of Atlantean territory.”_

Barry and Harrison exchange a glance.

“Um. Yeah,” says Barry hesitantly, and he’s surprised when the other man’s face splits into a wide grin and his brown eyes light up.

“I’ve been grounded for _weeks,_ I can’t wait to get back in the air! Ever since they took me out of the sky I've just been restless, you know? Thinking of going fully rogue, maybe-”

“It’ll be dangerous,” warns Harrison, and Barry nods agreement.

“No problem,” Hal says. He extends a friendly hand to Barry, who shakes it awkwardly. (He’s not used to people in this new and hellish world being quite so bright and friendly.) “Hal Jordan. What’s your name, again?”

“Barry. Barry Allen.”

“And you work for STAR?”

“Um- yeah, pretty much.”

“This isn’t legal, is it?”

“Um- yes? No?” Barry falters, confused, and Hal grins even more broadly (if such a thing is possible.) Barry can’t help but to smile back, and his face feels stiff, like it’s been too long since he really smiled.

“I didn’t think so. So, let’s head out-”

Hal doesn’t have time to finish his sentence before Barry grabs him and zips away, running towards the government facility where Hartley and Tess claim the weapon is being kept. Barry focuses on running, but he can hear Hal give a surprised yelp. He doesn't go stiff, though, which is something Barry's had problems with before- instead, Hal is practically  _leaning_ into the Speed Force.

"Don't do that," says Barry warningly, and the speed distorts his voice. "You'll...loose an arm or something."

"Really? Hey, what was that?"

"What?"  
  
"Totally looked like a Dementor or something, I could get a better look at it if I-"

_Oh no,_  thinks Barry, glancing over his shoulder at the approaching Time Wraith. "That thing's trouble," he says as he feels himself start to slow down. They've been tracking him, ever since he broke the time stream, but he thought it had been long enough that the universe had accepted the changes. The wraith is close now, and Barry's moving so slowly, and it reaches out a skeletal hand-

And Hal lunges forwards, almost out of Barry's grip, and punches the wraith in the face. It shrieks and spins away, and Barry gasps as he speeds up, arriving at the government facility in a burst of lightning mere milliseconds later.

"Thanks," he says.

"What- what was that thing? And you're  _meta?"_

"Yeah, where I'm from they call me the Flash. That was, um, a Time Wraith. They don't like me."

"I gathered."

Robert meets them at the entrance in full Grey Arrow gear. It's still weird to see the drab greys and blacks instead of Oliver's forest green, but Barry's almost used to it now. He notices blood splattered on Robert's sleeves, and can't tell if it's fresh or not.

“Where’s the original pilot?” Barry asks, a little worried. He sets down Hal, who staggers a moment and blinks before straightening up.

“The original pilot is in a closet. He won’t be waking up for a while. I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you were worried about. And Piper’s got the rest of the staff paralyzed, Sara is covering the back door.”

  

* * *

 

“And we’ll be available over the intercom as long as you need us,” Tess says as she finishes coaching Hal through the basic functions of the alien ship. Barry went back to Coast City to pick up Harrison, who was quickly able to expand on the government's loose schematics and preliminary tests to provide a much better summary of the alien ship's controls than any of the facility's experts could have. He and Tess had also figured out the ideal drop point of the bomb to allow Hal the most time possible to escape the blast radius.

“If you need help, just radio-”

"Got it," says Hal enthusiastically. "Fly out over the ocean, steer with these rod things, this is the navigation system. Once I get close enough to the Atlantean base, I hit the big red button and get the hell out. Can't wait!" He grins. 

"You sure you'll be okay?" asks Barry, and Hal nods.

"Off to save the world! Have to say it feels  _great."_ (It feels like this is what he's meant to do, and Hal ignores the small feeling of dread in his stomach. His voice doesn't shake, or if it does only the Pied Piper can hear any difference.)

As Tess, Harrison, and Barry step back and the doors of the alien ship slide shut, Hal waves.

Barry grins and waves back.

* * *

 

And not an hour later, as Hal flies over the Atlantic, everything goes to hell.

“Hal, is there something wrong?” asks Barry, in response to a colorful curse on Hal’s end of the line. There is nothing but a crackling moment of silence.

“Is he okay?”

Tess nods, looking at the monitors. “His ship is still online, but he’s evading something, dipping like crazy. Hal, what’s going on?”

“There’s some giant thing underwater,” calls Hal, his voice distorted by static.

“He’s getting out of range of communications,” says Harrison tensely, fiddling with the dials. “That should clear up the interference-”  
“I can’t get through!” shouts Hal, his voice sounding desperate.

“Don’t worry, Hal, we’ll get you out,” Barry says, hoping his voice stays steady. Beside him, Hartley is typing furiously. “You’re almost at the coordinates, this must be the guard-”

“Don’t think there’s any chance of me getting out of here,” says Hal. _“Damn!”_

Tess gasps. “He just lost a wing,” she reports.

“There’s no way he’ll be able to reach the Atlantean base now,” Harrison says quietly.

“Jordan, can you hear me?”

Over the ocean, plunging into the gaping jaws of one of the deep-sea monstrosities that rose out of the water below him, Hal switches off the communications. He’s not sure quite how he understands which button turns off his link to the rest of the world, he just _knows._ And then he hits the big red button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter should be coming soon, it's a sequel sort of thing to this one and should be fun to write. And then I'll write something else for Earth-2niverse, but I might come back to Flashpoint-verse at some point too. :D
> 
> I love reviews!!


	6. Green Lantern

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part Two! I may or may not write something in the future about Barry and Hal saving people in SPACE, but I don't think I'm familiar enough with Green Lantern canon to do something like that. Anyway, I still love reviews~

“I’m afraid there just isn’t enough Speed Force to go around,” says Eobard, smiling. And then an arrow rips through his chest.

Barry doesn’t have time to process what happened, and he doesn’t see Robert Queen dragging himself over the rubble until after Eobard crumples to the ground.

“There is now,” says Robert with a very cold smile. He turns to Barry and holds out a letter in a shaking hand. The paper is spotted here and there with dark blood. “For my son,” he mumbles as Barry takes the envelope and tucks it away. “Now run, Barry,  _ run!” _

And Barry takes a deep breath and runs, straight into the golden Speed Force and out of the timeline, and behind him all turns to fire. Somewhere, Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein scream in unison as they finally burn away to ash. Barry runs, and it is more painful than he ever thought running could be, red-hot blood pouring down his legs and his face and stomach bruised and aching. He runs faster, all the way back in time.

* * *

 

A quick search by Cisco (“You’re  _ alive,”  _ says Barry, and at the moment that Cisco touches him they share the memories of the timeline that was a little like heaven and a lot like hell, and Cisco remembers another one of his many deaths, but he says nothing because Barry is shaking and covered in blood, there’s more important things to handle) shows that Hal Jordan vanished from Coast City some months ago, and has not been seen since. 

He was a fighter pilot, regarded as a bit of a renegade, although nowhere near as bad as the reputation he had gained in the aborted timeline which Cisco now calls the  _ Flashpoint  _ timeline. Barry races away, crossing half the country in a few minutes as Cisco and Caitlin search for clues on Hal’s mysterious disappearance.

“Hal?” calls Barry, phasing into Hal’s old house. It looks much the same as it did in the Flashpoint timeline, although dustier. Barry walks through the rooms, looking for any sign of a struggle. The stove’s off, and so are the lights, and the door was locked. Wherever he went, he probably wasn’t forced to go.

Barry frowns and turns towards the door, and suddenly he is blinded by a burst of green light and something hits him on the head,  _ hard.  _ Everything goes black.

“What do you want?” says a familiar voice, and Barry’s eyes blink open. “Sorry about the whole, um, hammer thing. Thought you were someone else.”

Barry can’t figure out why everything is green, before he reaches out a hand and brushes the sides of a glowing...box? Cage? He could probably phase through this without much trouble, and he starts to stand up before his head spins and he crumples.

“What do you  _ want?”  _ asks Hal again, and Barry turns to find the source of his voice. 

“I came to find you,” he mumbles. “Police reports said you’d vanished for three months. That’s not normal.”

The box dissolves, and Barry finds himself looking at someone who’s most certainly Hal, in what is most certainly a green and black superhero suit. And it’s  _ glowing.  _ Hal blinks, looking almost as confused as Barry feels now. “But you’re the  _ Flash.” _

“Um, yep. That’s me.”  
“So why come looking for some grounded pilot?”

“You don’t look much like a pilot to me,” says Barry, nodding at the glowing suit (and now, he notices, an even more luminous ring on Hal’s hand. He assumes Hal is a hero, he can’t imagine a world where the pilot would be anything  _ but,  _ although he made the same mistake with Len in the Flashpoint timeline.) “More of a metahuman.”

“Oh, I’m, uh, not a meta. Just a regular guy with a ring. I would’ve taken it off before, but I didn’t recognize you when I came in.” Hal tugs off the ring and his suit dissolves into jeans and a loose jacket, eerily similar to the clothes he had been wearing to fly the desperate mission against the Atlanteans.

Hal pauses and adds, “You never answered my question.”

And Barry starts talking, he can barely help himself from spilling out the story of how he can run so fast he jumps between times, between worlds, how his actions caused ripples through the past and the future and set the universe off course. He wonders if he should be telling Hal any of this, but the man has what looks like a glowing, magical ring, and Barry figures Hal should believe it.

“So… I died,” says Hal. “And you’re sure the records said the alien pilot was dead on impact?”

He looks worried. Barry shrugs. “The same government captured and tortured the Supergirl, I wouldn’t put it past them to murder the pilot if he  _ wasn’t  _ dead on impact.”

Hal wonders what would have happened to the rest of the universe. He wants to tell himself that someone else would’ve stepped up to take his place, but deep down he understands that there was nobody else who could have been quite the same. And that means the Green Lantern Corps…

“Wow.”

And then Hal starts talking, telling Barry what happened in this world, how he was given a ring by a dying alien and ended up halfway across the known universe, and it feels good to let someone know all of what’s going on, because if he can tell  _ anyone  _ it’s the man who travelled through time and trusted him, in some other reality, to save the world.

“That- that’s  _ big,”  _ says Barry. “That’s way bigger than anything I do, like-  _ wow.”  _ There’s a long pause, and Barry adds, “Hey, listen. If you ever want to stop by Central City, come by STAR Labs and find me.”

“Sure thing,” Hal answers. “If you ever need help with anything, give me a call- I’ll probably be within, you know, a few light-years of Earth.”

With a nod, Barry hops to his feet and zips to the door.

“I never got your name,” calls Hal, and Barry backtracks, standing in the doorway. 

“Barry.”

“See you around,” Hal says, and Barry’s gone in a blur of golden lightning.


	7. Time Wraith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on an idea that Tmae and I were batting around on tumblr- basically, the Time Wraiths are speedsters who were ripped out of time, including those from the various erased timelines in the comics.

"There's a Time Wraith following Iris," says Barry in a rush, bursting into STAR Labs. "Where's the sonic gun?" Cisco has taken to tying his hair back to prevent it from being blown into his eyes by Barry's sudden entrances, and it takes him a minute to look up from the simulation he's been trying to run all day, to-  _Time Wraith._

"What? Why Iris? They only hunt down speedsters. It's coming after you now, isn't it," he adds as Barry glances over his shoulder, rocking on the balls of his feet. "Hang on, the gun's in the vault. Third door on the left, with a few other things Hartley helped make. Don't touch any of them." He remembers that Barry doesn't really know this timeline, Barry's from some different kind of time and his memories don't match up. And the last thing they need is for one of the sonic bombs to go off.

And Barry's gone, and Cisco presses his lips together nervously. Any second now the wraith is bound to come through the wall-  _and there it is,_ he thinks as the wraith appears in a cloud of darkness and his heart skips a beat. This one is smallish, and as it hovers near the elevator, he has the sudden horrible thought that ridges of its eyeless face look very much like a charred speedster's mask (he remembers what happened to Zoom, and shudders, and hopes Barry found the gun) and then the wraith dives forwards quick as a thought and Cisco was just a little too late to dodge.

 _Cisco's been in the Speed Force before, a storm of blue and gold power and sound and chaos so wild it felt as if it would shred him into atoms. When he took Iris into the Speed Force to pull Barry back to their universe, he had to protect her, his powers forming something of a shield between them and the worst of the storm. And when they burst back into three-dimensional space, his lips were blistered and his skin smelled like ozone and gunpowder._  

_This is so much worse._

_Before, he had only dipped into the shallows of the Speed Force- and now he is in the center, the heart of the storm, and he can feel the power ripping through him, burning him down to nothing (is this what it feels like to be struck by lightning?) and there's nothing he can do, the light here is so bright it's like looking into the heart of the sun_

_and he feels_ scared,  _even more scared than the feeling of a vibe gone bad, more like the way he remembers feeling seconds before Eobard killed him, frightened and lost and horrified and somehow_ betrayed  _all at once and he would scream but he doesn't really exist, he doesn't have a voice to scream with any more_

_And then suddenly, even through the howling of the storm around him Cisco faintly hears someone calling him. No- not him. Shouting a name, desperately, not his, the-_

Cisco wakes up on the ground, feeling insubstantial and ill. Someone is screaming. He realizes that it's him. He's screaming. He should stop, but instead he chokes in a raw breath and screams again, fingers scrabbling on the slick floor. He rolls over onto his stomach and gasps, looking around and blinking at the sudden lack of blinding light. 

"Cisco?" asks Barry's voice, sounding far away. 

"We couldn't move you," says Caitlin. "You were...fading in and out. Nobody could touch you."

Cisco stares up at them blankly for what feels like a very long time. And then he sits up, shaking, and leans back against the desk. "Where- wraith?" he manages to force out, and the words sound hoarse and raspy and strange. 

"It's gone now. I don't know where, it disappeared as soon as I got back," said Barry. "And you were on the ground, and I got Caitlin but we couldn't get you to wake up. What did you see?"

"Speed force," mumbles Cisco. He takes a deep breath of perfectly ordinary three-dimensional air. He stands up, and stumbles, and basically falls into his spinning chair. It's his favorite chair. Sitting back and gripping the curved armrests makes him feel a little better, and his heartbeat slows. "I was the wraith," he says. "I was lost in the Speed Force. There was some kind of a mistake, and I'd been...thrown into the deepest level of the Speed Force. I was  _scared."_

"Did you find anything out?" Barry asks.

"I heard someone calling my name. His name." He frowns and remembers. " _Bart."_


	8. Julian Albert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes Julian looses chunks of his memory. He's pretty sure that it's Barry Allen's fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also known as "Julian is Alchemy but doesn't know it" based off of this tumblr post:  
> http://corriganns.tumblr.com/post/151945975995
> 
> ~gakorogirl

Julian wakes up laying in an alley with bruises down his side and his favorite shirt halfway shredded, and somehow it is  _all Barry Allen's fault._

He hates memory gaps.

Maybe he was mugged? He checks for his phone and his wallet, both untouched. After a moment, his phone starts ringing, and he answers it and tries his best to sound like he isn't on the ground in an alley somewhere downtown. 

"Hello?"

_"Hey, Julian? It's Barry."_

"How did you get this number?"

_"Um, you gave it to me like...three weeks ago?"_

He doesn't remember that either. It doesn't really matter whether he actually did give Allen the number or not, though. "Allen, what's going on?"

_"Three more husks down by the river. Nobody could reach you."_

Three husks found at once. Julian stands up and grits his teeth as a stabbing pain goes through his arm, and looks around to see where he is. He doesn't really recognize this part of town but he thinks he can find his way to the river. Wait- he needs to put on new clothes first. "I'll be there in ten minutes. Try not to touch anything." 

He walks home and pretends to ignore everyone giving him suspicious looks. In his head, he makes a list.

Three more husks. Clariss was alive (for a while, anyway) after they found his husk, so maybe the others are alive too. 

He thinks he has a broken rib.

The husks are predominantly appearing by the riverbank, but he's already ruled out the possibility of an aquatic metahuman. (Maybe it's time to check again, monitor the river more closely.)

Maybe he got into a fight? He's had people take a swing at him before, but never like  _this._

Everything is Allen's fault. He has to keep Allen away from the river. This is important. 

Why is it important? He focuses for a minute, but all he can remember is black water lapping on rocks. 

What's the most recent thing he can remember before waking up in the alley? He closes the door to his apartment behind him. He remembers that he left last night to do something very important, something to do with the river.  _Must have been following up a lead._ If he's forgotten some important piece of evidence... Julian sighs and changes clothes, noticing the shape of the bruises on his sides and back. From fists, probably, although there's also something that looks like a footprint right over his broken rib.

He's never lost a fight before (not that he can remember, anyway.) He stares at his reflection for a while, vaguely unnerved. He tilts his head. The reflection tilts its head. With a start, Julian realizes he's spent several more minutes than he was planning to, and he rushes out the door.

Hopefully Allen won't call him again before he gets to the waterfront. Hopefully Allen won't mess anything up. _(Hopefully the Flash won't mess anything up.)_

This is all, somehow, Barry Allen's fault. 


	9. Magenta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Could be something else." Julian's blackouts started about a year before he finally got out of England. They used to be infrequent, but now they're getting worse.
> 
> Frankie Kane has blackouts too, or at least she says she does. It can't be a coincidence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A part 2 of sorts to the previous chapter. I did this instead of my NaNo work for today because a.) I've been meaning to write this since I saw the episode and b.) I saw people saying some stuff I didn't agree with about both Julian and Magenta and I am motivated by Spite.
> 
> Please forgive any mistakes in the dialogue, I only watched the scenes like once through before writing this fic
> 
> ~gakorogirl

The girl stares at her hands, her small pale face trembling. She's holding a glass and rolling it in her palms, and the hair that tumbles over her eyes is bright pink. She seems familiar, somehow, like he's seen her before but doesn't remember where. He doesn't remember a lot of things these days, it's worse than it's ever been.

"Who's that?" asks Julian.

"That's Frankie Kane, the victim's foster kid. Poor girl's been in and out of homes for years." Detective West lowers his voice, leaning forwards a little. "Listen, she said that she _blacked out_ during the incident."

Julian suddenly starts paying attention. "Blacked out?" he asks sharply.

"Repressing memories is a coping mechanism for lots of foster kids," Allen says (or he says something like that, Julian's much too busy watching the girl to pay much attention.)

"Is it?" he says vaguely. "Could be that. Could be something else." Maybe her blackouts are the same as his, and he's been doing research ever since they started getting really bad... She looks disoriented, and when he walks into the room she looks at him blankly. "Hello there," he says, in his friendliest voice.

Frankie smiles tightly. "Hi," she whispers. She's wearing makeup that makes her look older than she is- or tries to, anyway. It's become smudgy with tears.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Can I get you some more water?"

She holds out her glass, and he smiles at her. "I'm going to need another glass," he says as he walks out, ignoring Allen and West's baffled looks.  _She_ didn't do it, she couldn't have, but someone else in the same body is a possibility. Especially for a child fresh from half a dozen foster homes.

He goes up to his lab and takes a DNA sample from the glass, rubbing a cotton swab around the rim and then onto a slide. A few minutes of basic analysis show no trace of mutation in the girl's genetic material, and Julian frowns. He has one more lead, so he takes a fresh sample and does his best to ignore Allen's complaints.

There it is. The element found in all of the husks, and he wagers there's a husk that just perfectly matches this pink-haired girl, somewhere out by the river. So Julian rushes out of the lab and down the stairs, looking around to see that the girl is already nearly to the door, walking in a wobbly line and seeming very disoriented. He can't remember her name, so he just shouts,  _"Girl!"_

She looks up at him and flinches, and he would almost feel bad if he weren't so triumphant.

"You did it!"

"What?"

"You did it, didn't you? The lamp-post? _You_ put your foster father in the hospital!"

The girl buries her fingers in her pink-streaked hair and hunches over, her breath coming in rasps. He needs to push harder. "You're a liar," he shouts, his voice ringing through the room. Everyone is looking at him now, faces mixed horror and anger, but he's _right,_ he knows it. "You did it!"

She straightens up slowly, her shoulders pushed back, and tilts her head to one side so her hair tumbles over one shoulder. Someone else is here now, Julian realizes as her fingers splay out and tremble in the air, as if she's lifting an invisible weight.

"I wanted to do _so much more_ than put him in the hospital," she snarls in a deeper, fiercer voice. "And I'm going to do the same to  _you!"_

Julian looks up as the mural begins to peel away from the wall, and feels himself starting to slip into a blackout. And then the Flash grabs him and drags him clear, and he blinks. He doesn't even think to question how the Flash got here- and is almost immediately gone, zipping after the girl who sprinted out the door in the confusion. 

 

He intends to check her medical records just as soon as his breathing settles into a halfway normal pattern again, but...well, he's not really sure what happens. He remembers right up until the Flash pulled him out of the way of the falling metal, but now he's in an alley by the river with a name on his tongue.  _Wally West._ He knows a Wally West, the detective's kid. And Wally West wants something- something- they can give it to him, they can give him everything he needs. What?

Julian's head clears and he forgets all about Wally West. 

These blackouts are becoming terribly inconvenient, and he's growing more worried by the minute. Especially after what happened with the girl this morning.

What time is it, anyway?


End file.
